India imported PCBs worth $478 million from China and Hong Kong during the April-October period, constituting 55 per cent of the total.

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) issued a notification on Friday (December 30,2022) about the initiation of an anti-dumping investigation on imports of printed circuit boards (PCBs) originating in or imported from China PR and Hong Kong.The scope of the product underconsideration in the present investigation is limited up to six-layer PCB.     The product under consideration is classified under Chapter 85 and under the tariff heading 8534 0000 “PrintedCircuits” of the Schedule I to the Customs Tarrif Act.

The following PCBs are excluded from the scope of the product under consideration:

a. PCBs with more than 6 layers;

b. PCBs for use in mobile phone applications;

c. Populated printed circuit boards of all sizes.

The period of investigation for the present investigation is from 1st July 2021 to 30th June 2022 (12 months).    The injury investigation period will be 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2019, 1st April 2019 to 31st March 20, 1st April 2020 to 30th June 2021 (15 months) and the POI. 

All communication should be sent to the Designated Authority via email at the email addresses adg16-dgtr@gov.in, adv13- dgtr@gov.in, jd15-dgtr@gov.in and jd16-dgtr@gov.in.  It should be ensured that the narrative part of the submission is in searchable PDF/MS Word format and data files are in MS Excel format.

The applicant association in the application has proposed Product Control Numbers (PCNs) as below for making a fair comparison of the imported product with the like article produced by the domestic industry.

The probe has been initiated on a request from the Indian Printed Circuit Association, according to the notification.       The association has alleged that the PCBs being imported from these countries are causing serious damage to the domestic industry.       It has also requested the imposition of anti-dumping duty on the import of the subject goods originating in or exported from the subject countries.

The application has been filed by the Indian Printed Circuit Association (IPCA) on behalf of its member companies producing PCB.   It has been claimed that there are close to 200 manufacturers of PCBs in India, most of whom are small and in the unorganized sector.   The Indian manufacturers of PCBs are also in MSME sector and fragmented across India.   The applicant association had filed the application with three member companies as applicants providing the complete information in the formats prescribed by the Authority with the support from nine other member companies manufacturing PCBs in India.